Girl Talk: ALL DAY

Mon Nov 22 2010

You can't tell me Ozzy and Ludacris aren't kindred spirits. Thus begins the latest sortie from DJ Gregg Gillis, and while it's silly to read too much into his mashups, the juxtaposition of "War Pigs" and "Move Bitch" is conceptually satisfying.

"Blitzkrieg Bop" and "Waiting For The Sun”, on the other hand, make a horrible pairing, both musically and logically. But when he retains The Ramones for a mixture with Aaliyah’s “Try Again”, it's another big win. And so on, and so on, through another game of hey-that-one-song! There are way too many great, brief ideas on this mix to mention, but too many bad ideas too. Painstaking attention to rhythmic detail aside, I'm left thinking, after over two years since the last album, THIS is the best shit you could come up with?

Is it a gleefully danceable party? Hell yes. It’s expertly designed for maximum nostalgic tug and pure titillation. There’s nothing wrong with getting lost in that energy and reveling in All Day for what it is, but as the piece of art Gillis intends it to be, it's only partially realized. The best mashup artists find much more intuitive and imaginative combinations of songs than you’ll find here. Just cramming more, and more well-known, samples into a single track isn’t that impressive; it just means you have a lot of time on your hands. Anybody can speed up and slow down chunks of tracks and paste ‘em together with free downloadable software.

The artistry is in finding thematic correlations, and these are frequently weak or nonexistent on All Day. Mismatched motifs abound, seemingly chosen purely because Gillis knows he could never clear the sample, sticking it to anybody unhip enough to object, rolling around in his Robin Hood costume. There’s no reason to splice Radiohead with Ol’ Dirty Bastard or Cream with Biggie or Neil Diamond with Crooked I, except Gillis knows that folks will recognize them all and probably get a kick out of how “unorthodox” they are. And in the interest of full disclosure, I can’t help mentioning that the use of “Imagine” crosses my nothing-is-sacred threshold, in addition to rendering the end of the final track silly and undanceable. By album’s end, you get the impression that he has never listened to anything remotely underground in his life. Or maybe he’s just not interested in sampling music he could actually get permission to use.

Ultimately, there are way more enjoyable moments than awkward ones, particularly the beginning and ending portions of “Jump On Stage”, the last half of “This Is The Remix”, Young M.C. vs. Kylie Minogue in “Down For The Count”, Supergrass vs. Bone Thugs in “Steady Shock"...Some of these are truly inspired, damn near genius, but so much of the album is only superficially impressive, I can’t help thinking the few transcendent ideas are pure luck. But seriously, who cares? Nobody but nobody will be complaining if this comes on at your next party.

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Cal Roach is a word whore currently being pimped sporadically by Milwaukee Record and the Journal Sentinel, and giving it away for nothing right here at you-phoria.com. He also co-hosts the Local/Live program on 91.7 WMSE FM every Tuesday at 6 p.m. and spouts nonsense on twitter as @roachcraft.